Ways to stay motivated to work hard when you work from home
Working from home is a great gig on so many levels; you don't have to drive to and from your work place, you can set your own hours, you can work at your own pace, etc. However, all of this freedom can sometimes be detrimental to actually getting work done. Sometimes when there is no boss to crack the whip it is hard to motivate yourself to sit down and work. Here are a couple of ways to stay motivated when you are working from home.
Set regular hours and stick to them-a forty-hour work week, whether at an office or at home, still requires forty hours of work. If you work from home, you need to plan which hours that you will work. If you need to work forty hours you might set up five eight hour days, four ten hour days, or even two marathon twenty hour days. However you want to schedule your work hours, write down the schedule. Don't just plan how many hours per day you are going to work; you should also play what hours they will be. You might have a schedule that tells you to work 9-5 on Monday, 12-8 on Tuesday, etc. Once you have that schedule, treat it as a regular work schedule. Show up on time, everyday and stay for all of your scheduled hours.
|
|
Schedule breaks-it is unreasonable to expect an employee to work straight through a shift without a break and it is similarly unreasonable to expect yourself to do it. Give yourself whatever breaks you think you need and then stick to them. You might get up for fifteen minutes in the morning hours to make a second cup of coffee and use the bathroom. Go ahead and schedule whatever sort of lunch hour you like to take. If you can grab a sandwich and a drink in a half hour, go with that. If you like to leave the house at lunch and take care of an errand or two, you might schedule an hour and a half. I like to work straight through after lunch but schedule your afternoon beaks according to your preference. Once you get used to your schedule, you will be surprised how easy it is to stick to it.
Minimize distractions-distractions can come from all sorts of places. If you have kids at home, you might forget about working while they are awake. Even if you have kids old enough to fend for themselves, it seems like they will always need you for something if you are available. If your kids are old enough, you can close your office door and make rules about interrupting you. Distractions can also come from the telephone or from email. Treat your home office like a regular office and minimize the personal phone calls that you take while you are working. You might adopt an "emergency only" telephone policy. The computer is trickier. You will probably have to check your email as a part of your work but you should avoid personal emails. You should also not get into the habit of surfing the web when you are supposed to be working. It is too easy to waste time online. If you find that you can't control yourself with the phone or the computer, you might have to remove them until you get into the habit of working.
In general, you will be more motivated if you try to make your environment as office like as possible. If you wouldn't drink two glasses of wine at lunch and then head back to the office, don't do it and then head back to your home office. If you wouldn't spend an hour chatting on the phone in a regular office, don't do it in your home office. With practice, you will get used to motivating yourself to work when you are supposed to be working.
